Publications & Documents

This report uses systems thinking tools to address pervasive problems in Slovenia's procurement system that the government has struggled to remedy through traditional regulatory means. The report outlines how room for innovation can be created within highly regulated policy domains and how governments can systematically benefit from it. Systems thinking allows for a new understanding of the role of procurement. The report explores potential reforms that could be designed from the bottom-up, to address specific behavioural and structural barriers – such as public perception, risk aversion, accountability and control functions – that cannot be addressed using only a legalistic approach.

Behavioural insights (BI) has become widely used by public bodies around the world, mostly towards improving the way policies are implemented and influencing individual behaviour. As the field of BI evolves to tackle more complex policy issues, there is widespread perception that BI can and should go beyond the study of individual-level decision processes for higher impact. This report presents research on applying BI to changing the behaviour of organisations, with a focus on fostering elements of a safety culture in the energy sector. It presents comparative findings from experiments with energy regulators in Canada, Ireland, Mexico and Oman, as well as guidance for applying BI to safety culture going forward.

This paper uses a distributed microdata analysis approach to map patterns of technology adoption in Canadian firms, exploring the relationship between technology adoption, business practices and innovation. Prepared by the OECD NESTI secretariat in collaboration with Statistics Canada, the paper leverages a unique enterprise database combining information on innovation, technology adoption and the use of selected business practices. This work suggests a number of possible pathways for selecting and defining priority technology and business practices for data collection and reporting, implementing recommendations in the 2018 Oslo Manual on enablers and objectives of business innovation, and identifying potential synergies between business innovation, management and ICT, and other surveys focused on various aspects of technology adoption.

The SME Policy Index: Eastern Partner Countries 2020 – Assessing the Implementation of the Small Business Act for Europe is a unique benchmarking tool to assess and monitor progress in the design and implementation of SME policies against EU and international best practice. It is structured around the ten principles of the Small Business Act for Europe (SBA), which provide a wide range of pro-enterprise measures to guide the design and implementation of SME policies. This report marks the third edition in this series, following assessments in 2012 and 2016. It provides a comprehensive overview of the state of play in the implementation of the ten SBA principles, and monitors progress made since 2016. It also identifies remaining challenges affecting SMEs in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries and provides recommendations to address them based on EU and international good practice examples. The 2020 edition also features a novelty: An assessment of three new dimensions going beyond core SME policy (competition, contract enforcement and business integrity) looking at key structural reform priorities that are critical to establishing a level playing field for enterprises of all sizes and ownership types.

This paper provides new evidence on the main characteristics of laggard firms - firms in the bottom 40% of the productivity distribution - and their potential for productivity growth. It finds that laggards are on average younger and smaller than more productive firms, and matter for aggregate resource reallocation. Moreover, younger laggards converge faster toward the productivity frontier, suggesting that the composition of the laggard group matters for future productivity. Yet this report finds that laggards converge at a slower rate in highly digital- and skill-intensive industries, suggesting that there are barriers to technology and knowledge diffusion. This could help explain the much-debated productivity slowdown and the increased productivity dispersion. This report also finds that policies aimed at improving workers’ skills, alleviating financial constraints to investments and increasing firms' absorptive capacity through direct R&D support can accelerate the diffusion of knowledge and technology, and help laggard firms to catch up.

Les gouvernements du XXIe siècle doivent suivre l'évolution des attentes de leurs citoyens et tenir les promesses de l'ère numérique. Les approches basées sur les données sont particulièrement efficaces pour répondre à ces attentes et repenser la manière dont les gouvernements et les citoyens interagissent. Ce rapport souligne le rôle important que les données peuvent jouer dans la création de conditions améliorant les services publics, augmentant l'efficacité des dépenses publiques et éclairant les considérations éthiques et de confidentialité. Il présente un cadre du secteur public fondé sur les données pouvant aider les pays ou les organisations à évaluer les éléments nécessaires à l'utilisation des données afin de prendre des décisions mieux informées dans tous les secteurs publics.